Stop Looking at Me, Car

British carmaker Jaguar Land Rover is currently testing self-driving pods with "virtual eyes" at a facility in the U.K. that will follow pedestrians as they cross the road, as if to say, "I see you," the BBC reports. The heavy-lidded eyes, which stare out (looking very unimpressed with you) from the front of the car's hood, are meant to reassure pedestrians that the car has detected their presence and won't go running through a crosswalk. While it might seem like some technician got amped about putting googly eyes on a vehicle to make their Cars dreams come true, there's actually science behind the innovation. It takes humans a while to trust new technology (just think of that time you tried to explain Facebook to Grandpa), especially when that technology takes control out of our hands and puts it into a microchip. Jaguar Land Rover has based experiments on research that shows that 73 percent of people trust self-driving cars less than human-operated ones.

Researchers hypothesize that having a car make eye contact with you taps into the same sense of security as locking eyes with drivers before crossing in front of them. The car company has partnered with self-driving technology company Aurrigo to test the pods in artificial street scenes at a facility in Coventry, U.K., not far from Jaguar Land Rover's headquarters. (Aurrigo is also running a separate test of self-driving pods—these are sadly eyeless—on city streets in Milton Keyes, about 50 miles away.) There's no word yet if these I-see-you pods could eventually be part of Jaguar Land Rover's partnership with Waymo, alongside the electric Jaguar I-Pace SUVs that Waymo has been using for some of its trials.

Uber Gets $500M from Toyota

Yesterday, Toyota announced it was pouring $500 million into Uber's self-driving program, giving the ride-share company a much-needed kickstart after it temporarily suspended operations following the March fatality, CNN reports. As part of the partnership, Uber hopes to retrofit a fleet of Toyota Sienas with autonomous technology for real-world testing by 2021. It's a big vote of confidence from the Japanese automaker, considering that while Uber's self-driving trials have resumed in Pittsburgh, following the accident in Arizona, it hasn't yet restarted testing vehicles in fully autonomous mode. It's also another sign that major car companies see the writing on the wall: Cars are a-changing. Toyota was also one of 21 companies that are part of a consortium invited to Japan to make a roadmap toward flying cars over the next decade. Also in that group? Uber. No word yet on whether flying cars will have googly eyes, too, but we can dream.